Cencoroll – Review

The first thing that would enter your mind once you hear it might probably be Dennou Coil — it has some similarities in some way since they are both sci-fi animes but they’re not really that much alike in concept they want to introduce. Cencoroll is somewhat very appetizing during the very first few minutes but rather very upsetting since it somehow looked half-baked during the last few in my perception. You may want to call it open-ended if you want though.

Cencoroll is imaginative, whimsical and provocative. The plot is not that very spectacular since it seemed to me a plain old “boy meets girl” plot. Well, even though this part of the story is weak, its concept appealed to me, with all those tubby bouncing and transforming monsters. Well, the fact that the existence of these monsters wasn’t given any explanation or what-so-ever is rather presumptuous though because imagination has its own limits. Yep, I was watching the show with no clues at all at the back of my mind. I’ve been just dragged inside a story of some weird monsters fighting with the reason — they must eat each other up or else, they’ll cease to exist. Okay, that was rather convenient to be a plot device.

Yuki, is the protagonist, no doubt about that, but she became somewhat conceited because she was able to control Cenco during the last few minutes. This part is also ambiguous…. Cenco is odd, assuming you don’t find its existence already odd in the very first place. It must be a sign of affection towards Yuki that Cenco allowed her to take over. I think this should have been given more significance since I don’t think a monster, or whatever it is would submit itself just because it was fed. After all, [spoiler] Cenco had the guts to eat up Tetsu’s arms out of emergency purposes. The existence of the ahoge thing used to control Cenco, and how Yuki came to possess one wasn’t also explained.

Well, it’s not a real big deal if they treat these things as something trivial and should not be explained already but I don’t appreciate such implication, since the reason is not implied at all. That’s very infuriating because even though it’s not conventional for creators to assume that the audience know too well already, it’s like acting as if they don’t care whether others came to like it or not as well. They are very conceited then.

I don’t know whether the Yuki and Tetsu pairing should really be treated as a pairing since their relationship was just flimsy. Maybe, if they were given a little more time in order to develop the character of this short film, then maybe their paring would have been more convincing for the viewers.

Yes, the production is nice and all, especially the music since it was done by supercell, and I think their music is very commendable, it’s just that, this is just the superficial aspect of the film, what I’m looking for is a story with all the twist and and turning points — and not just senseless fights.

In conclusion, I’m not very glad on how it came to an end, assuming there won’t be any succeeding films for this, it was very inadequate. Well, considering that it came from a one-shot manga, it was somehow expected but it gave me high hopes since it garnered a production award. Well, it’s nice if you’re asking for a smooth animation, graphics and such but it would have been nicer if it wasn’t rushed that much and given some lengthy time, like 1 hour and 30 minutes, similar to a typical anime movie, so to build up some beefy story and not just a dreary one.